.gif)
From his biography:
In 1985, Marvin published a book, "The Society of Mind," in which 270 interconnected one-page ideas reflect the structure of the theory itself. Each page either proposes one such mechanism to account for some psychological phenomena or addresses a problem introduced by some proposed solution of another page. In 2006, he published a sequel, "The Emotion Machine," which proposes theories that could account for human higher-level feelings, goals, emotions, and conscious thoughts in terms of multiple levels of processes, some of which can reflect on the others. By providing us with multiple different "ways to think," these processes could account for much of our uniquely human resourcefulness.
In other words, the sense of self is not necessarily the consequence of there actually being a discreet thing.
As I mentioned in an earlier post Marvin’s theories on the mind had a big influence on my interest in Buddhist philosophy, Anyway, this conversation took place in his living room in Brookline Massachusetts. Marvin is also an accomplished musician. I snuck 30 second or so of him playing the keyboard at the end. It is his wife’s voice you hear in the background.